Oude Tart is our take on a Flanders Style red ale. It has won back to back gold medals in that category at the World Beer Cup (2010 & 2012) as well as a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival in 2010. This sour red ale ages in oak barrels for anywhere from 6 to 18 months before being carefully blended to taste. The resulting beer is pleasantly sour with hints of leather, dark fruit and toasty oak.

Pours a ruby red hue with a two finger off white head, the smell is leather, oak, funk and cherries, the feel is medium bodied with moderate carbonation and coats the mouth with morello cherries, funk, oak and finished quite dry and tart and overall what a top drop and take on this style would buy again glad I drank fresh cheers.

Appearance: Pours a murky chestnut color. The head is two fingers high, and khaki in shade. For a sour, the retention is damn near incredible. However, no lacing is left on the glass. (3.75)

Smell: This just smells like a punch in the face. It really has a sour, apple-esque aroma, one that's loaded with massive tartness. But when I focus, I can still pick up some cherry-laden esters and even some caramel malts. The fact that it manages to have an extremely bold sourness yet still seems balanced just impresses the hell out of me. (4.25)

Taste: Oh yeah, this is tart as hell. It opens up with wonderfully biting lactic sourness, which at first fades away to leave a wonderful finishing fruitiness. At first. After a few sips, the cherry-laden fruitiness sadly disappears, leaving just the tartness. It's definitely what I expect from a sour made by The Bruery: the tartness is absolutely wonderful, but it's not really complex. Oh well - as an aforementioned punch in the face, it's quite excellent. (4)

Mouthfeel: Biting and tannic as all get out. And it's also somewhat fizzy to boot. While it's too tart to be really drinkable, I still wouldn't have any trouble sipping on this all day. (3.75)

Overall: Though The Bruery's barrel-aged sugar bombs tend to disappoint my palate, their sours tend to be rock-solid. This is no exception. Once I realized it wasn't the second coming of Rodenbach Grand Cru (and that I wasn't going to get a wonderful hybrid of cherry-laden fruit and subtle tartness), I started to enjoy this for what it is more and more. All told, I'm still impressed with this brew. (4)